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The F-30 had several problems according to IH, mainly: 1. Low power to weight ratio- it was heavy for the HP, which lead to: 2. High cost- IH was putting a lot of iron into the horsepower range, tractors essentially are coseted out "by the pound". This led to: 3. Low sales. Sales were only about 1/5th of the F-20 (@30,000, compared to 154,398 for the F-20, and @147,000 for the F-12/14), which fed back into cost, of course. The F-30 did have some things going for it- high crop clearence, strong drivetrain (helped somewhat by that low power) The way to eliminate the high weight, low horsepower, was to go to an F-12 type chassis in the F-20 size, and stick a big motor in front of it. While the M did start out as the F-20 engine with the F-12 type chassis scaled up, the sales department sent it back several times for revision, mainly to get power up and weight down (in fact, the sales department sent the tractor back several times for less weight, more power). So what you got was the M, which took the old F-20 and F-30 market, the H, which took the F-12/14 market plus some of the old F-20 market, and the A and B, which took IH into a whole new market, plus some of the low end F-12 market (the F-12 was actually a bit much tractor for the low end in the 1930s, and really, really got chased out of the low end by the Allis B. The F-12 was repositioned as a light 2 plow tractor by the horsepower increase with the change to the 14.)
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